I was switching back and forth last night between the GOP debate and the Met game before catching up on last night's "24," so let me give you my observations on what I did catch, plus a few other bits:

*It may almost be time to add Shawn Green to the list of Omar's successes - I'm really amazed that he is hitting .324 and slugging .525, when he looked for all the world like he was headed irreversibly downhill last season. It's a Mike Lowell-style resurgence. Green doesn't look like a power hitter; he's built like a finesse pitcher. The Mets have batboys beefier than Green.

*24 has just gone catastrophically off the rails since the end of the plot with the Arabs. They should probably have ended the season right there. In particular, we have seen no explanation of how Chaing new where and when to call Jack to start this whole thing, and no good reason why the White House should have agreed in the first place to negotiate with a state actor holding a U.S. citizen hostage in Los Angeles. It's gone downhill from there. The Russians seem awfully touchy about nuclear technology that their own consul was basically handing out like Halloween candy, yet blase about threatening war with the U.S. when they know that the U.S. has access to that technology. The simplest explanation is this one.

*The account of the White House hospital visit to John Ashcroft, by the way, sounds so much like something from 24... a scene very, very radically different from the caricature of Ashcroft as a jackbooted thug. I would love to have been a fly on the wall for Bush's talk with Comey to know how his concerns were ultimately dealt with or whether Bush just twisted his arm on the importance of the intelligence being collected.

*That set for the debate looked like a bad game show...I missed the rules, were the candidates actually buzzing in for rebuttal time?

*Having seen only transcripts of the first debate, I had not seen Paul or Tom Tancredo live before, and they were much unlike my image of them from reading their statements for years - Paul seemed like a frail old man, and Tancredo seemed meek and nervous; I was expecting a guy who looked and sounded like Bob Dornan.

*Goldberg and Vodkapundit had basically the same reaction to Romney - of course, Romney's father was a car salesman (well, a CEO of a car company, actually). In positioning himself as a conservative, Romney is basically a smart businessman pursuing an underserved market, not a man seeking higher office out of a firm belief in anything in particular, and it shows.

*There is really, really no purpose to Thommy Thompson and Jim Gilmore being in this race, none.

*Other than his position on trade, I can't think of a single thing I have seen from Duncan Hunter to dislike. Hunter has no realistic chance of getting the nomination, but he might not be a bad running mate - he's a serious guy who looks and sounds like a serious guy.

*From what I saw, compared to some of the last debate's questions, I have to say that the Fox team was just miles better than the MSNBC team in asking questions that GOP primary voters would actually want to see answered (one exception was the justly-booed question to McCain about the Confederate flag) and avoiding speechifying by the moderators. From here on out they should just have Brit Hume & co. do all the GOP debates and Tim Russert do the Democrats.

On Green - agreed, though his defense is really, really bad at this point. I'm not sure if he's more of a defensive liability than offensive asset, but it's close. But I got to give the guy credit for a bit of a resurgence.

On 24 - There are so many problems with this Russia thing. First of all, how does one stinking chip contain all of the defensive secrets of a major military power? Secondly, even if the Russians hold the American accountable, why would they provoke an attack on the one country that they would most likely rely upon if they were attacked by China? So they're going to risk a two front war with two of the largest armies in the world just because they're pissy?

Ru Paul is cool. She should be a GOP Presidential candidate. Why not? She is certainly hotter than any of the current (really old guy) candidates and it would almost be impossible for her not to be smarter than them as well. Maybe that would shake things up over there.

Posted by: jim at
May 16, 2007 8:50 PM

OK, I finally looked at the Fred Thompson response. Very funny. Witty. Clever. Also, like Reagan with Mondale, HE DIDN'T ANSWER THE LETTER.

Whatever issues you may have with Michael Moore, his letter to Thompson was a list, point by point. Those points were cogent. In the end, whatever issues we have with Castro (who to me is a murdering thug who should rot in prison, along with his new buddy Chavez). And Thompson wouldn't, or couldn't, or honestly, need not, answer.

Also, let's start gearing up. Now that Chavez has decided to redistribute the land to "the people," well, history has a way of repeating itself. So, like China and the USSR, let's start planning for massive food air and sea lifts. Venezuela will have the usual famines Communist planning always causes, and, as usual, the hated US will be asked to help out. Which we will, then we will be yelled at for not doing enough. Well, you know the drill...

Posted by: Daryl Rosenblatt at
May 17, 2007 12:13 PM

Daryl, why bother? Whatever comes next will be laid at our doorstep. Any intervention done will be dismissed as "for the oil." So, if we do a thing we should take the oil, gratis. They had fuctioning industry, Chavez is destroying that machinery; with the blessing of a majority of the populace. If we can't cut an imperialistic deal, why bother? China and the Sudan is the model going forward. Works for the French in Africa, China and Russia everywhere. The NYTimes says we suck, the EU agrees, and nobody cares what the poor third world bastards think about anything. Why bother?